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Her arms were heavy. The impact of the collision brought her tumbling backwards on her butt. She folded in on herself, holding close the fleshed form in her protective clutches, shielding the delicacy with her own mere body as all pandemonium descended with a tumultuous crash around them.
There were waves in her ears. Echoing ringings accompanying the stricken silence. Her breaths were short and loud and her heartbeat shattered her eardrums.
The still movement and eerie quietness of the vicinity invited her to unfold herself slowly, peering down at her lap to the soot-stained boy there. The flesh that wrapped around his body and soul was scarcely visible beneath the blackened dust coating him. The side of his small frame facing away from her was bright red and puffy, enraged by the heat of the fire. It seared and blistered with bubbles on his skin like boiling water.
She followed the constellations radiating from inside his meager body, now weak and flickering. In her arms, the lupus wolf was barely visible, its light gradually dimming. She was taken back to distant memories harboring a familiar scene.
Her vision was blurry as pearls of water budded on her lashes. It was strange to experience water leak from her eyes in this mortal form, having always been a being forged of fire. Gradually, the tears trailed down her cheeks. Her chest heaved as she quietly sobbed, peering down miserably through a watery gaze. She wanted to plead his forgiveness, but all that escaped from her throat were muffled, choked sounds.
She despised the water pouring, obscuring her sight, cascading her face. She rubbed the wetness with the back of her hand, smudging ash, but to no avail as the beads of water formed and rained. She wanted to scream. The hotness still surged deep in her belly, but it was subdued by the desolate, hollow ache that throbbed in her bones. There was a sizzle as the liquid evaporated from her warm skin.
His frail body rattled as he coughed. Her hand cradling his head ran its fingers through his hair soothingly. Her other, gently brushing away the soot dust on his face. She looked away, surveying the hopeless darkness that enshrouded the vicinity. The veil of igneous decimation as smoke plagued the clear air, ashes rained down in black flurries, and soot masked the liveliness of everything.
"You... st-" She glanced down as he struggled to speak. She watched his soft, childlike features contort into a grimace and felt his body quake in pain. "Stopped it."
Her heart leapt to her throat. Strands of hair, once a fiery haven of coils and was now awash in soot, fell into his face as she dropped her head. Her own face was marred in despair, knowing that his words were wrong. She had started it. She was the cause of his agony.
For once, she longed to be what she never was. Had she been the moon, she would heal his essence and patch his ailings. Or the cosmos, void of space and time - where the fire could never touch him and she could dial backwards the clock.
Once upon a time, she had been a beacon of glorious light, with the intentions of touching all with her warm rays. Now, she feared she was only but a harbinger of destruction, a ticking bomb spreading its explosive flames, everything that her celestial being fought against to eradicate. How had the darkness consumed her so?
They were amidst a cloud of ebony dust, smoke swirling. The child burst into a fit of coughs, the breaths in-between sounding labored and wheezing. She wound her arms beneath him and lifted him as she got up, cradling his frail stature close while her legs carried them onwards unsteadily to clearer air.
Her bare feet touched ashen ground. The verdant grasses and lush forestry that had previously been were no more. There was an ache aside from hers that throbbed in her being with each step. She could feel the earth's pain, dripping in agony, reaching for her warm touch despite the decimating heat that it had wielded upon it.
From a cautious distance, within the concealment of the able forestry, multiple pairs of animal eyes observed the silhouette of a woman emerge from the thick haze. They had been drawn to the thick scent of smoke and screeches of wildlife running rampant away from the ashes, intent on investigating. Nothing had prepared them for the tremendous inferno they witnessed, pulsating heat that nearly seared their fur off. And then, it had paused and receded. Within a heartbeat, gone.
Paw steps sounded as canine creatures ascended past their spots hidden in the undergrowth, revealing a group of giant wolves bearing bright eyes and sharp teeth. They kept their distance as one in particular approached.
The nearing wolf's fur morphed into flesh, physique alternating from four legs to two as the other limbs lifted with his torso, uprighting itself into the form of a naked man. The sounds of hair receding and bones crinkling as they readjusted their positions filled the atmosphere as more of the canines followed in suit, though some remained in their feral body.
"Goddess above," a mortified voice whispered as the men assessed the remains of what they could discern through the swirling smoke and raining ash flakes. The domain ahead was charred to a barren wasteland, a mirror of the black sky devoid of its twinkling stars. The only life remaining that they gauged was the woman in its midst holding tight a child. Nothing about her was tangible, her scent spewing smoke and skin and wild hair caked in soot. Her earthen body was starkly bare, but details exempting her feminine outline were scarcely visible beneath the thick coating of char. Only her strikingly golden eyes were prominent as she watched them with a forlorn gaze.
Though her face expressed sorrowful defeat, her body was prideful in its stance - standing tall and shoulders high, exuding a dominant presence that commanded attention. It was apparent that she was not one to often be struck down.
The wolves felt a strange familiarity upon the sight of her. These invisible strings that pulled them to her, bonded them with a stranger they had never met before. They tread cautiously, unsurely.
She looked at the furred creatures, her features etched in anguish. It made her blood boil when met with the creations of her sister's, a stolen body, but she was despondent when struck by the pooling warmth of their lupus appearances, a familiar face fresh in her mind, reminding her of times long now past.
Time. The word twirled in her mind on repeat. Relevant to a mortal whose time was finite. A split second of being and then gone. Never before had the goddess worried about such a mortal thing - eons pass and eons more are to be expected, and nothing fundamentally changes. The universe remains. The sun rises again.
Until, her universe had shattered, and the sun had fallen.
Time was something that she would never be able to grasp or redo. Eternity did not guarantee forever when time ticked, she was overdue in realizing.
The boy in her arms coughed violently, trembling. The mix of human-shifted and feral wolves looked on in stupor, recognizing one of their own seared in distressing burns. His skin was veiled in crimson swelling and blackened dust; peppered with charrings and burns. His breath was shuttering, lungs choking and gasping for air amidst smoke.
She wasn't the dealer of time. She had nearly ended too early his fleeting moment of existence - and though she wished to reset his clock, she would have to make do for the rest of it.
These creatures were mere products of a cataclysm; not the cause of it, she knew, but her aversion to their existence still plagued her view. Though she peered at the wolves with a fiery gaze, demeaned to have to acquire the assistance of the mortals, she swallowed her pride down thickly, eyelids fluttering shut as her tall body slumped low in defeat.
"Please," came her voice, cracking from disuse and desperation. "Help him."
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